Friday, December 21, 2007

Costco Observations

It is rare for me to go to Costco or any of these humongous warehouse type city stores. I'm not partial to crowds, and honestly, I don't need corporate size stacks of cleaning supplies or canned goods. I am known to be most practical, aka the coupon queen, so my spending habits in supermarkets are rather tame. But let me loose in Costco and I might go haywire!

The other night my husband and I went -- primarily to get new tires for my car and to have them put on. In the meantime, while waiting, of course we went into the store and spent several hundred (some of them unnecessary) dollars! Some were frivolous buys, others were practical. But the truth is that for some things, Costco is not a great "metziah"; any local supermarket or department store offers better sales, even on individual items that you'll buy multiples of in lieu of one bulk item. Just ask me; I know these things.

It is most interesting to enter a Costco at the start of the holiday season and see the carts filling up fast and the holiday fever in the air. I take the time to see what people are buying and imagine scenarios in which they'll share these purchases.

Gigantic bags of frozen shrimp were in many carts. As was bottled water. As was toilet paper.

Hmmm...eating too much shrimp makes you thirsty, I guess...and then you need to go to the bathroom.

I saw people with industrial size bags of frozen french fries, ketchup cans, mayonnaise bottles, bagged lettuce, and I figured they own restaurants and buy supplies here at a supposedly cheaper cost.

Italian fruit cakes, packages of chocolates, electronic gadgets, games tables, jewellery piled up in shopping carts. Someone will be most happy this Xmas.

For our family, the Kosher meat section is ideal and we're lucky to have 2 full-size stand-up freezers and two fridge freezers in which to store the chicken and beef that we bought. But in all honesty, for many of the other great Kosher items that are offered in bulk for fridge and freezer, I wouldn't be able to store all the merchandise. So I left it in the store for someone else to buy.

So, I guess the moral of this post is: shop wisely (which is not necessarily a Costco thing), and if you are at Costco, amuse yourself by observing others and imagining how they use the merchandise they buy.